Beer Diary Podcast episode 4: Emerson’s Bookbinder and Midstrength Beer

June 1, 2011 Phil 13 Comments

I was in the very-vague planning stages for a Midstrength Beer tasting (which did eventually, er, eventuate) and George and I thought that the topic itself was worthy of a longer discussion, not merely a little recurring segment — although we’ll keep that, too. Sessionable beer really is an ongoing obsession of mine; a good one is a bloody marvellous thing for all sorts of reasons, and I’m delighted that they seem to be coming back onto the beer-drinkers’ and beer-makers’ radars.

We do apologise for the inadvertent hiatus suffered by the podcast (it’s the 30th of August as I post this, and so about five weeks since the last episode); we’ve both been abnormally-busy with our “regular” jobs, and I was also knocked over for a few weeks by a particularly nasty winter lurgy (as us hospitality workers occasionally are). We hope to return you (and ourselves, obviously) to regularly-scheduled programming from here.

As always, a direct download is available (and so will more-bite-sized ‘chapter’ chunks, in a day or two…), there’s a podcast-specific RSS feed, and you should be able to get us on iTunes. George and myself can both be reached on the Twitterthing, and you are (naturally) more than welcome to leave comments, here.

Show notes:

(0.40) It had been a while been recordings, and now it’s also been an extra while between postings. That feels oddly prescient.
(0.50) Beer of the Week: Emerson’s ‘Bookbinder’.
(2.00) Pompallier House is totally worth a visit.
(3.30) It was officially called the Museum of Fishes and the usually-useful internets are being a little unclear on whether or not it still exists / has been sold / moved. Any local knowledge would be welcome; that place was awesome.
(4.20) Southern Cross is a surprisingly good good-beer venue, still.
(5.10) Basically everything is Toby’s fault, if the situation / humour demands. We’re both a little surprised that this is his first time getting called out for it.
(5.50) Emerson’s Pilsner was Beer of the Week for Episode I.
(7.55) When I ran the aforementioned Midstrength Beer tasting, the phrase “kebeb-seeking missile” came out of nowhere to describe late-night drunken food choices. You all know what I mean.
(8.15) The clip from The Human Body doesn’t appear to be online, sadly. But the whole series is worth watching, not just for that moment.
(8.50) I really did flub a good deal of the history, here. Kieran Haslett-Moore mercifully jumped in in a comment (below) and padded things out properly / tidied them up. I didn’t help my case by not really quantifying my “historically”, of course, and I suppose the general point — that midstrength things did fade from view for much of the last beer-drinking generation — still stands.
(9.30) Before proper sanitation, the water really would kill you. Beer has to be boiled, and has booze in it — both of these things help keep you safe against any number of otherwise-nasty microbes. The past was not a Golden Age.
(11.20) 8 Wired ‘Underwired’ got its own Diary entry, and was mentioned in Episode I (foreshadowingly) and II (with the benefit of hindsight).
(13.00) The definitional question is always fun for nit-picking (preferably with a few pints), but 3-point-something is a good guide. The Session Beer Project are the Americans I refer to who (for various good reasons) opt for ≤4.5%.
(15.00) Martyn Cornell’s post on the subject is a typically-great mix of history and damn-good-point-making.
(15.20) If you’re thinking in physics terms — and you should, occasionally — the relevant concept is power, not work; it’s not just the strength of the thing, it’s the strength per time. More-flavourful beers can be “sessionable” at higher ABV.
(16.20) Seriously, if you see Fraser around town, buy him a beer. Not just for his Argument Concerning Boozemath — for all sorts of reasons. The key is to remember that, factoring in various things which doubtless vary wildly, each beer you have contains some alcohol you’ll process before the next beer and some extra, intoxicating alcohol that’ll slowly build up. This is not really reflected in ABV or in “standard drinks” notation.
(20.40) In New Zealand, beer under 1.15% attracts no excise tax; anything 1.15% – 2.5% is subject to 38.208¢ per litre of beverage; and all beer 2.5% and over is levied at $25.476 per litre of alcohol.
(23.10) See? Toby made me drink Tui. Well, he didn’t make me. I still blame him.
(24.00) Pressed for recommendations: Emerson’s ‘Bookbinder’; Hallertau ‘Minimus’ (punnier name suggestions for the Winter Variant are welcome…); Cassels & Sons ‘Elder Ale’ (Elder-berries is very-definitely Monty Python); Yeastie Boys have made a few midstrengthables — I unfairly had a couple of no-longer-available ones come to mind, but unforgiveably forgot to mention / didn’t yet know about the Pot Kettle Black 2011 ‘Remix’, which is a session-strength “weemix” (and Stu’s pants really are legendary; Jed Soane got a good photo of them, as you’d be right to expect); Galbraith’s ‘Bob Hudson’s Bitter’ (which is lighter than I remember, at 3.2%).
(27.30) The Wikipedia page for White Lightning puts it bluntly — “It was known for its high alcohol strength and low price. White Lightning was popular with those wishing for alcoholic intoxication at a minimum price.” — and notes that its strength crept gradually downwards before it was abandoned entirely.
(29.40) Coopers make great Gateway Beers (as we mentioned in Episode II), and frequently (though not always) make just plain great beers.
(30.50) Talking about this again more recently, I’m not sure why the Australians were earlier on the midstrength uptake, in mass-market terms. One hypothesis that came up (I forget out of whose brain; possibly my own) is that the more-mad sporting culture over there helped push the big breweries to make 3.5%-ish lagers, in an effort to find a relatively-palatable middle ground for both the drinkers and the local authorities.
(31.20) That’s how out of date we got, right there. The has been a ruling on Radler, as you probably know. The bad guys won, as they sometimes do. I’ll have to rant properly about that at a later date. Campbell Live had two surprisingly-decent pieces on the subject, one before the verdict and one after.
(32.20) There you go, I said it: IPONZ are narcoleptics, or drunks. Or both.
(33.30) I know it was a while ago, so I should give a link to last time, which was indeed about “winter ales”.
(35.00) Breweries on the way: Garage Project (gee, we should interview them; tune in again next time…); ParrotDog (which probably isn’t at all Art Deco, in the logo department); Revolution Brewing; Brewaucracy.
(39.20) Liberty Brewing’s stuff has all been worthy, and some of it just plain marvellous. ‘Never Go Back’ is still my solid favourite. And I did slightly screw-up the history of the company; Stu (currently of Yeastie Boys, formerly of Liberty Itself) appeared in a comment (below) to give the proper story.
(42.40) Yeastie Boys ‘Fools Gold’ (no apostrophe) is a pleasantly-coincidental thing to mention, given the slot this podcast episode will fall into, in the Beer Diary timestream — weirdly-distorted as it is. If you haven’t heard George trying ‘Rex Attitude’, you should listen to the tail end of Episode III. He is embarrassed to have to correct himself on his film references, though: he didn’t mean Remains of the Day (he enjoyed that), he meant The Age of Innocence (which he definitely did not enjoy).
(45.00) Cue the music: ‘Shopping for Explosives’, by The Coconut Monkeyrocket.
(45.26) We’re way overdue to give credit to Audacity, the open-source audio editor we’ve used for all of these so far. George — a man with degrees in marketing and zoology, not audio engineering — found it alarmingly-easy to learn and capable of genuinely impressive cleverness.

Actual Diary entries

Yeastie Boys ‘Fools Gold’

May 31, 2011 Phil 5 Comments

Given its provenance, I think it’s safe to assume that the name here is more a Stone Roses reference than an Iron Pyrite one. But hey; you never know — just when you think you’ve got their naming scheme figured-out, they do go and change things on you.¹

If you’re me — and I am, if you think about it — the name works especially since it combines my fondness for golden ales with the fact that my nieces have long called me “Uncle Fool”. I don’t know whether it started from classic two-year-old language-mangling or from a particularly-early activation of the Cook Family Bastard Sarcasm gene. But it passed from Niece I to Niece II, and will probably become part of Nephew I’s lexicon, once he starts finding his words. I kinda like it, I must say.

Meanwhile, the value of t has embiggened itself embarrassingly, thanks to recurring computer issues and a particularly vicious visit from an hospitality-worker winter lurgy. So this is fast drifting into the dark recesses of my already-enfeebled memory, but I can say that I absolutely loved it — short on particulars why as I admittedly am.

But it all makes sense, in a weird sort of way; I was at Hop Garden again just yesterday (for their absurdly-sublime burger, which had Yeastie Boys ‘PKB’ as an ingredient, no less) and something about the absolute depths of a stupidly-freezing winter night does make at least part of your mind turn back to warmer days — even if you are famously fond of colder weather and are basically-obliged to think back that far anyway, since you’ve become so far behind in uploading your Beer Diary.

As I say, I’m always up for a good golden ale — they’re the warm-weather obsession which matches my winter fondness for oatmeal stouts — and this was a nicely punchy one that suited a snackfest of Hop Garden’s big-fat-fries and salt-and-pepper squid (the latter matching unusually well, with its higher-than-usual pepperiness). To me at least, Fools Gold straddled the line between your modern light-and-lush golden ales and your more-classic paler-than-pale English pale ales; different, but still delicious. I only managed to have a couple of pints before it was gone from the City’s taps, so I presume I wasn’t the only one who found it a charming little uncomplicated and worthy thing. Peter and I were just mooching around town in honour of the fact he was finally free of his University responsibilities — and, given my nearly-interminable history with those places, I have complete sympathy with the need for a pint or several to mark the ending of such things.

Verbatim: Yeastie Boys ‘Fool’s Gold’ 31/5/11 on tap @ HG, with Peter, who is now free of Uni, and with fries + salt-and-very-pepper squid. Apparently 4%, which is marvellous. Pitched as “pale ale”, it’s a nicely punchy golden. It was handpulled @ HZ, but I always prefer these bubbly. Goes gangbusters with “dinner”, such as I have. More forceful than a lush Three Boys Golden; but just different, not remotely ‘inferior’.

1: Personally, I’m really hoping it’s actually a reference to a Fool’s Gold Loaf — a sandwich (I use the term oh-so-loosely) popularised by none other than Elvis Presley. Fittingly, it’s a hollowed-out whole loaf, crammed with a jar of peanut butter and a whole ’nother jar of grape jelly — and a motherfucking pound of bacon. I’m seriously tempted to make one and maybe go on to produce a whole series of Elvis Meal Time videos.

Actual Diary entries

Renaissance / 8 Wired / Yeastie Boys ‘Rescue Red’

May 26, 2011 Phil 4 Comments

Around a year ago, Luke Nicholas was talking to Sam Calagione and was able to apparently-accurately say that their ‘Portamarillo’ would be New Zealand’s second-ever collaborative brew — after the also-with-Luke Epic / Thornbridge Stout. Now, they’re everywhere.

To maybe-needlessly hammer the point: Galbraith’s Alehouse is currently hosting several brewers as part of a ‘Great Brewers Cask Ale Series’; Liberty and Mike’s made a neighbourly project in the form of a ‘Taranaki Pale Ale’; what the Epic-led ‘Mash Up’ lacks with its loosely-defined sense of “collaboration” it more than makes up for with its relatively-massive scope; and at this year’s IPA Challenge at the Malthouse alone, damn-near half the beers were collaborations to some degree or other.¹

They seem like such a characteristically beer industry thing, too. I’m not sure if the wine folk are too snobbish to ever put their heads together and make something in the ‘rising tide lifts all boats’ spirit of a collaboration — perhaps they consider their boat sufficiently risen, or perhaps I usually just stay far enough away from grape juice that I don’t hear of such projects, if they do exist. Whatever; they’re a wonderful thing, and it’s great news that the trend (a very North American thing, it’d be fair to say) has crashed upon our shores. Long may it, and the spirit that propels it, continue.

And so here with are with ‘Rescue Red’, as it eventually came to be known, after a flurry of potential titles. A three-party project from Renaissance, 8 Wired and Yeastie Boys, it was brewed as a fundraiser for relief efforts in Canterbury and Queensland. Brew day was documented by Jed Soane, and the official write-up is well worth a read (and not merely by the usual standards for press releases). It’s a suitably multi-faceted thing; a sessionable, hoppy amber ale, fermented with a saison yeast. I like all of those features — in descending order, essentially — but it kept throwing enough curveballs that even after several decent-sized tastes, I wasn’t sure if I liked it. I continued to go back to it, though, which probably entails that I did like it — or at least I was a) fascinated, and b) non-repulsed.

Entirely fittingly, then, its actual appearance in my notes reigns supreme as the Grand Champion Distracted Diary Entry Of All Time; I entirely abandoned my first attempt, unfinished, and had to start afresh the next day. On the night of the initial datestamp, Jillian — her the Newfoundlander of the cigarette-lighter sign-writing — showed up at work just as I was finishing a round of Kegtris. It wasn’t long until she was due to continue her overseas explorings and head over the Big Country, so we took that as a fair-enough excuse to make a bit of a night of it — which involved borderline-gatecrashing a house party at which neither of us really knew anyone, dancing like lunatics to a fucking-marvellous and entirely-random ragtime band,² and some generally-enjoyable wandering-around-town. Awesome fun. Hence the ‘Nope; I’ll write about this later’.

In the end, I’m fairly sure I did enjoy ‘Rescue Red’, although it probably picked up a few Circumstantial Bonus Points — not that I ever object to those; hardly-relevant surrounding happenings are always going to colour your opinion of a thing, and you’d be a fool to try and stop them entirely doing so. It was definitely quirky and interesting, without being obnoxiously so in that awful trying-too-hard kind of way. The saisonny funk, conspicuous hops and rich red malt all got along together very well, however much they might look clashy on paper — after all, it might appear that organising a fridge, someone else’s party, and a chance encounter with swing music wouldn’t work well together, either; these things can surprise you occasionally. And you’d do well to let them.

Verbatim: Yeastie Boys / 8 Wired / Renaissance ‘Rescue Red’ 26/5/11 4.8% on tap @ MH $10, but not so bad, because proceeds go to Queensland & Canterbury. “Hoppy red saison”, they say, with typical disregard for… everything — 27/5/11, restarting, with another. I was too distracted last time. Not in a bad way. I keep trying this, because I’m not sure if I like it — but I guess this kinda means I do. It’s enjoyably peculiar, but not overly or flashily so. Gorgeously red, too. Faintly berry-ish, the funk making it like cranberries on the turn.

1: i.e., Yeastie Boys and Liberty, twice; Townshend and Greig McGill of Brewaucracy; Moa’s Dave Nicholls with some help from Malthouse Overboss Colin Mallon; and a ‘Four Horsemen’ hophead supergroup collaboration in the shape of Luke Nicholas & Kelly Ryan of Epic, Steve Plowman from Hallertau, and Liberty’s Joseph Wood, again.
2: Namely, the Roseneath Centennial Ragtime Band. They play pretty-regularly around Wellington, it seems, and there are sample tracks available on their MySpace page.^a
— a: Meanwhile, Myspace still exists?

Actual Diary entries

Invercargill ‘Pitch Black’

May 23, 2011 Phil 5 Comments

The aforementioned ‘St. Bernard’ was proving a popular guest, and comparisons to ‘Pitch Black’ (made, unprompted, by quite a few people) had kept up enough that a couple of circuits of my ever-skeptical brain had started to fire up and crackle with the question of whether we were all just being nostalgic for that weirdly-long-lost (on tap, at least) old favourite. And I never really get annoyed with those careful, questioning bits of my brain — because they provide a damn-good excuse to retry something, you know, for Science!’s sake.¹

Nostalgia, and its opinion-inflating effect, can be fairly problematic in the beer world — as much as it can be anywhere else, I suppose. People often seem overly-fond of something they discovered on holiday, or think something isn’t as good as it used to be, or swear that something imported is always “better back home”. None of those are nonsense scenarios, of course: the enjoyment of beer is an ineliminably circumstantial thing, some recipes really are sacrificed over time (given the need to make ever-increasing quantities, or in an attempt to chase a more mainstream drinker — or both), and — all else being equal — something probably is better close to its source than after a long journey. Memory in general is problematic, of course. Mine, particularly so — hence the Diary itself.

But no, on this occasion, we’re all good. Every positive thought that lingers in your mind about Invercargill’s sessionable little stout is probably bang on. I tried this again, after probably more than a year, and after a relative boatload of delightful little somethings-similar — and it was still crackingly fantastic. There is some serious wizardry involved in cramming such dense deliciousness into such a small four-point-five-percent frame. That’s cleverness, that is; artistry, even. It’s got the flavour of a much-heavier thing — big, smooth, coffee-milkshake smoothness. In its own terms, in its own weight division, it is damn close to perfection — and you have to suspect that, in a head-to-head, it could beat the tar out of a fair few members of the heavyweight classes. If Pitch Black started liberally quoting classic Muhmmad Ali smack-talk, there’d be no cause for complaint — on the simple (and also-very-Ali) grounds that it ain’t braggin’, if it’s the truth.

And once you pause for a minute — hell, take six-minutes-forty-nine-seconds, and watch the relevant episode of NZ Craft Beer TV — to consider the dizzying range that they release under their own name and the stuff they brew for Yeastie Boys and the Mussel Inn and others, you really have to be a little bit in awe of Steve Nally and his little brewery near the end of the World. If you happen to be wearing a hat, take it off to them — if you’ve not got one on your noggin right now, go get one; they deserve the gesture.

Verbatim: Invercargill ‘Pitch Black’ Stout 23/5/11 330ml 4.5% Speaking of which! $8 @ MH Worried we were just being nostalgic, but inspired to test after Jono had one earlier. And no, we’re good. This stuff is delicious. Big flavour on a lightweight thing, and very well balanced. Coffee milkshake kinda smoothness to it, with a nicely cocoa-powder bitter fizzle at the end.

1: I’ve always had a bit of a case of science-envy. I mean, I have a humanities degree. I never get to do actual science, though I have plenty of friends who do (in some very impressive ways), so I tend to overstate things when I do anything properly experimental.

Actual Diary entries

Townshend ‘St. Bernard’s’ Oatmeal Stout

May 19, 2011 Phil Leave a comment

I bloody loves Oatmeal Stout, I do — especially in the winter; it’s basically the off-season equivalent of my recurring summertime Golden Ale obsession. There is just something absurdly comforting about a good one, and I’ve been blessed by more than a few fine examples, lately, ranging from sessionable ones like this or my recent Little Creatures ‘Single Batch’ Oatmeal Stout, to crazy-big things like Liberty’s ‘Never Go Back’ (coming up in a few entries’ time, spoiler alert).

Delightfully, also, just as I was scanning this batch of Diary pages and uploading a fresh chunk of photos, my house was filled with the ridiculously-promising aroma of an oatmeal stout brewing. My flatmate has one on the go — it’s currently in the cupboard under the stairs, happily burbling away and fermenting, and is yet another reminder that I really should get back to brewing, myself. (Although if I start taking photos of and writing notes about beers I’ve made myself, everything might collapse into a singularity of weirdness — however necessary the note-taking will be, given my rubbish memory.)

A sessionable-or-nearly-so handpulled stout is a brilliant thing on a cold evening, and this one is the closest we’ve ever come to placating our one regular who has never quite forgiven us for no longer having Invercargill’s ‘Pitch Black’ as a permanent fixture (or even as an occasional guest; it’s been ages since we’ve had it on tap, mysteriously). I’m entirely unsure whether we’re supposed to go with the -nerd or -nard pronunciation, but that might be down to my general dislike of dogs and non-membership of any sort of tradition that gives a damn about “saints” — come to that, I’ve no real clue whether it’s named after the dogs, one of the eponymous saints, or any of the other various candidates.

Martin Townshend himself was at work not long ago, in town for our ‘West Coast I.P.A. Challenge’. He seemed a properly lovely chap, and that moment where you get to wander up to a brewer, shake their hand, and say “you make great beer” is always a great one. I do love that beer remains like that; you can still do that without seeming strange or fanboyish, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a brewer who’d give you a “and who the fuck are you?” look in return — they all seem genuinely chuffed to know people like what they make.

And Townshend really can be relied upon to make lovely and likeable beer, and their old-school authenticity appeals to a good number of our English / formerly-English / just-a-lot-of-time-in-England regulars. This stout was no exception; dry, fresh and light (with a cleanness that my weird-seeming “licking the inside of a used instant coffee jar” note attempted to convey), but still possessed of a very satisfying presence and bitterness. It didn’t last long on our taps, victim of its own success and all, but hopefully it’ll be back soon.

Verbatim: Townshend ‘St. Bernard’s’ Oatmeal Stout 19/5/11 pint on tap @ MH. From Nigel, with Kevin et. al.. Second only to Pitch Black, we say, as a sessionable black beer. Dry, powdery — like licking the inside of a used instant coffee jar. Not at all stodgy (which isn’t to imply that stodgy is always bad, of course); surprisingly light but still rich. Satisfyingly bitter.

Podcast episodes

Beer Diary Podcast episode 3: Stonecutter, Winter Beers (and Rex Attitude)

May 14, 2011 Phil 8 Comments

The weather took a serious turn for the freezing-cold just as we were contemplating our third episode, so something on Winter beers seemed suitable and sensible. It also gives us a chance to talk a bit about how breaking habits, taking chances, and paying a little more attention-to-situation in general can do a beer drinker a world of good.

I bought a bottle of Yeastie Boys ‘Rex Attitude’ to have after the recording, too, but when it turned out that George hadn’t actually gotten around to having one yet, we decided to ‘start rolling’ again and capture his reaction.

A direct download is available, there’s a podcast-specific RSS feed, and you should be able to get us on iTunes.

Show notes:

(1.20) Somewhat slack and distracted and (most recently) under-the-weather, I haven’t set up any such email yet. My bad. But obviously you should feel free to comment here, contact me via Twitter (@phil_cook), or whatever.
(2.30) George and I were frantically busy with another project between the recording-of and posting-of days for this episode. I do hope you excuse the confusing dates with which these things are officially tagged — it’s mostly a fiction to keep them in the correct running order with the actual Diary entries. Anyway, last Thurdsay (i.e., July 14), the Radler ‘verdict’ came down. In D.B.’s favour, depressingly.
(4.15) Beer of the Week: Renaissance ‘Stonecutter’, which I’ve loved for ages, and definitely not just because of the Simpsons reference, although that counts as pretty awesome gravy. We had this as one of several ‘Winter Beers’ at a tasting I hosted last Friday, and when I mentioned the reference, one of the attendees revealed that he was wearing a tshirt with the Stonecutter’s logo. Just brilliant.
(7.40) It won’t just be the strength; there is apparently a small amount of peated malt used as part of the varied-and-enormous grain bill.
(8.20) Yeah, “Banoffee” is a straightforward portmanteau of ‘banana’ and ‘toffee’, rather than its own thing. Which is almost disappointing, but the occasion to use the word ‘portmanteau’ does make up for it.
(12.50) There are few things more frustrating than an upset English customer telling you that the beer here is too cold, and not ‘warm’ like at home. Room-temperature consumption is a myth — at least as a general practice, some oddballs notwithstanding.
(22.10) Yeastie Boys ‘Her Majesty’ this year is utterly, utterly different from last year’s — though you can’t feel too bad when those guys go and ruin your preconceptions; they do that all the damn time. I liked this year’s a lot, but it’s not remotely in the camp of beers I’m talking about, here, it turns out.
(23.30) I will never stop recommending the imperial stout ice-cream float. It’s divine and such a weird experience. I’ve converted a few people, and you really should add yourself to that list.
(27.10) Beer is widely-varied enough that there are always exceptions to everything. Since a run-in with an off bottle of Peak Brewery’s ‘Monkey Point IPA’, strawberry (particularly strawberry yoghurt) has been a running-joke stand-in for offness and horror. But now Taranaki’s Liberty Brewing have put out a ‘High Carb Ale®’ which uses big doses of New Zealand-grown Chinook hops that lend it a distinct strawberry-ish flavour — in a good way, this time.
(33.05) Rex Attitude is a track by Laurent Garnier. Go have a listen; it’s suitably odd. Apparently the tune just came on Stu’s iPod as he was contemplating the beer, so the two were fused together in his head.
(33.50) Jed’s photos from the launch party are awesome. And his website is indeed thebeerproject.com.
(34.40) Nope; I still can’t quite make that joke work.
(36.00) Midstrength News, with a 7%-er in hand. Because everything in moderation — including moderation. As they say. Hallertau ‘Minimus’ is glorious, and its Winterised Cousin is just as lovely — not massively modified, just darkened up from ‘gold’ to ‘bronze’.
(38.50) NZCraftBeer.tv is definitely worth a look, although it seems in need of an update. New episodes do pop up on their YouTube channel. Kelly’s big-long blogpost about ‘Mash Up’ is a great read, and I thought the beer was pretty lovely, too. Hop Zombie IIPA — a.k.a. “One Trick Pony” — turned out marvellous.
(43.20) ‘Re: Your Brains’ by Jonathan Coulton really is a masterpiece. JonathanCoulton.com has samples and downloads and a store and everything.
(43.50) Cue the music: ‘Shopping for Explosives’, by The Coconut Monkeyrocket.
(44.05) Special Bonus Extra Beer of the Week: Yeastie Boys ‘Rex Attitude’.
(45.50) You really should watch The Trip. Seriously. Check out the trailer.
(51.00) It was simply called ‘Speight’s Harvest’, and George and I tried it with our friend Aran, who had just gotten a delivery of “bacon salt” from the weirdly-wonderful BaconSalt.com (tagline: “Everything should taste like bacon”). Hating the beer, we threw in the salt for a laugh. It didn’t help.
(52.10) It’s known generally as ‘Overtone singing’, and there are various traditions around the World; all of it fairly freaky to my ears, too. Check out Tuvan or Inuit examples, if you doubt us.
(55.40) Cue the music, again: ‘Shopping for Explosives’, by The Coconut Monkeyrocket.

Actual Diary entries

Monteith’s ‘Single Source’

May 13, 2011 Phil 5 Comments

Once more unto the brandwank, dear friends, once more.

— Not quite Henry V

This one positively reeks of being a project out of the marketing department rather than one with its origins in the brain of a brewer, beer drinker, or normal person. At the time I’m putting this post together (in early July), a cursory Google search still more-readily produces write-ups concerning the beer’s branding (such as its packaging and website) than it does things which address, you know, the beer itself. The ‘pitch’ is simple: a beer produced using ingredients from just one barley farm, and just one hop farm.

But immediately, of course, there’s a snag. That’s not “Single Source” at all. I’ve mentioned two farms already. And then there’s a brewery in Timaru — not at either farm, and not anywhere near the home of Monteith’s in Greymouth on the West Coast. The water is from the area around the brewery, but the yeast is from god-knows-where and doesn’t actually rate a mention. So that’s four sources for a modern beer’s four canonical ingredients, two (i.e., half) of which aren’t really discussed, and a muddling of a historic (small-town) brewery with a modern (national) ‘brand’. If they were talking about an estate beer, made with barley and hops grown at the brewery, it might be worthy of the title — and such things do exist.¹ Here, they’ve gone 1) catchy name, 2) half-assery.

Their precious Latitude / Longitude references don’t even make any damn sense. The location given for the origin of the hops — with its six decimal places — traces them to the grower’s front garden, rather than his fields. There’s some mention of the hop-farmer thinking his Southern Cross hops were particularly suited to the ‘microclimate’ in his garden in the official writeup, but there don’t appear to be any actually growing in that part of his property, and if they are just from his front yard, how ridiculously few have they used? Then, the coordinates for the barley — with their even-more-insane seven decimals — appear to point to the farmer’s driveway, or at least the hedgerow that runs along it. Something’s amiss; given their relative proportions in the brewing process, there’s just no way you could be more precise about the source of your barley than of your hops. And I called attention to their decimal places for good reason: six digits narrows you down to a tenth of a metre, seven digits basically gets you within a single centimeter. It’s an utterly stupid degree of “accuracy”, one that is just bursting with wank and ironically so “precise” it’s just obviously wrong. Three decimal places would pinpoint an area of roughly a hundred-or-so metres, and would thereby count as information rather than just bullshit.

On top of that, as Matt Kirkegaard pointed out (when he held his nose and read their over-inflated press release), it’s an absolutely bizarre kind of self-undermining bullshit if you stop to think about it for more than a second. It accidentally implies all sorts of terrible things about the beers in the same range: that they’re made without any real care or attention paid to the quality of their ingredients, that they’re utterly divorced from their roots (fitting for ‘Radler’, perhaps, but hardly inkeeping with the story for their ‘Original Ale’), and they’re not really worth protecting from getting lightstruck and skunked. If you go to conspicuous lengths to emphasise something apparently-worthy about one of your products, it starts to look rather odd that you aren’t really worried about that allegedly-serious concern when it comes to your others.

This isn’t remotely unique to Monteith’s and “Single Source”, of course. The same thing happens with the aggressively ‘all-natural’ marketing of Steinlager “Pure” — just what the fuck sort of witchcraft and chemical buggery and radioactive goo are they telling me is lurking in regular Steinlager? It’s probably partially a by-product of different projects being farmed out to different ad agencies, but it’s in particularly stark relief with this black-bottled, relentlessly brandwanked beer — especially given the fuckups the execution of its ‘story’, and the incredible sameyness of the product. And they have the unmitigated gall (amidst a fancy-pants website that tries desperately to be Down Home and simultaneously Ultra Modern) to describe their goal as:

A beer that didn’t need to rely on hype to be appreciated. A beer for the love of beer, if you like.

To which I have two-and-a-half responses: 1) like balls — and 2) if that was the plan, then a) you failed, and b) why all the, you know, hype? The beer isn’t terrible, at least. It’s the usual kind of basically-faultless but basically-featureless sort of thing we’ve come to expect from this corner of the market. It felt a bit like the label copy had been written in advance, or by someone who’d never met the beer (or perhaps a dictionary); it definitely wasn’t “aromatic”, though it did have a funk-free and pleasant mild nose, and it was certainly more in the realm of what normal people would call “smooth” than “crisp” (the lager-advertiser’s fallback adjective).

If we put it in its proper context of overly-marketed mild-to-flavourless lagers with delusions of grandeur, then I suppose I’d rather have one of these than a Budweiser. In that sense, and in that sense alone, it’s alright. But, to borrow the masterful conclusion from Hadyn Green’s piece on the subject:

In the end the fakers always lose, or run off following some other trend… Craft beer is like comic collecting, antiquing, cave diving, wine drinking or any other hobby — the interest for the enthusiast is the story. But the story can’t be tacked onto a paper-thin attempt. No one cares about the director’s commentary on a terrible film.

The beer itself is a non-disaster, and yet everything about “Monteith’s Single Source” is a clusterfuck of awfulness. Each word literally fails; the ad-man’s version of the world requires that you 1) ignore “Monteith’s”, lest you think less of their other products for lacking the prized black bottle, 2) not understand the word “single” or have any idea what goes into a beer or how many varieties might be used, and 3) not actually look up the “source” using the coordinates provided, in case you realise that their absurdly long string of digits is rather hollow and stupid and possibly some peculiar sort of geographical / mathematical equivalent to the kind of large, flashy (and, you know, overcompensatory) cars some men feel the need to be seen driving.

Verbatim: Monteith’s ‘Single Source’ Lager 13/5/11 330ml 5% @ MH Some 30th Birthday resonance with my Steinlager Edge, and a nice reminder that Moa aren’t the only local brandwankers. The ‘pitch’ is offensively daft, overwrought and ironically-damning of their main range. And it’s not single source, is it? The beer is freakishly pale — maybe the black bottle blocks out too much sun… Faint nose, mercifully funkless. Certainly not “aromatic”, though. Nice intial feel (though it’s more smooth than “crisp”), but the flavour, such as it is, is quickly tied to a piano and pushed off a bridge. It’s very nothing. A sad, wasted opportunity.

Monteith's 'Single Source', wanky ramble

1: So no, marketing division, this isn’t “a revolutionary new beer”. Even if you had made something genuinely “single source”, you wouldn’t have been the first.

Actual Diary entries

Epic ‘Hop Zombie’ IIPA

May 12, 2011 Phil 10 Comments

This must be the most-launched beer in recent memory. There was a first launch at Pomeroy’s in Christchurch, and then another at the Malthouse in Wellington (occasionally referred to as the “North Island launch”, in a weirdly straw-clutchy way). A week later, during Good Beer Week in Melbourne, at the delightful Cookie (a former occasional haunt of mine), there was an erroneously-billed “world premiere”, at which the beer itself was accidentally referred to by its in-house project codename: “One Trick Pony”. Then, back in the Little Country there were release parties in Auckland and Hamilton — a full calendar month after its first “first appearance”.

That’s not really a criticism; it’s more (or at least also) a nod to the tireless promotional efforts and getting-among-the-people that the Epic boys are willing to do. And they always throw a good party (as much as Luke may wind up inevitably whinging for more head-bang-worthy music), and manage to grab headlines without any manipulative or deceptive bullshit¹ — as I said when I was rambling about beer and marketing, a certain amount of brashness and swagger may be their m.o., but it’s unquestionably authentic and genuine. Unlike, you know, some people. And that, I think, counts for a whole bunch.

Malthouse couldn’t match Cookie’s astonishing record of a keg emptied in 40 minutes — one pint every twenty-four seconds, on average; that’s pretty-much just a tap left open, with glassware conveyoring along beneath it — but we blammed through four-and-a-bit kegs on the night and four more over the next five days. That’s 400 litres in a touch under a week. Which translates (for those not in the business / lacking a head for numbers / both) as rather a lot. Epic’s devotees are always eagerly awaiting a new release (or even just the return of a seasonal), and this one was pitched cleverly enough that it seemed to lure a whole heap of other people in, too. Masses of them obviously liked it, and in the gap between it running out and its any-day-now reappearance,² it’s probably been our most-asked-after absent beer (with Yeastie Boys ‘Rex Attitude’ in second place, I’d guess).

Most of us were expecting a straightforwardly embiggened ‘Armageddon’ — especially after the product codename somehow made its way out of the brewery. I think One Trick Pony is a fucking excellent name for a big-hoppy-something from Epic, though I perhaps have a conflict of interest, here: I’ve personally levelled that phrase at them in the past and been quick to congratulate them for ducking out from under the shadow of their own stereotype. When NZ Craft Beer TV (i.e., mostly-Epic-but-with-collaborators-of-a-sort) ‘Mash Up’ came out, the Spectre of the Pony was clearly on their minds, and people like little old me might’ve helped put it there. But, to their credit, they just keep doing their thing; the fatal point against O.T.P. as a beer name is probably just the simple truth that, as funny as they can be, self-deprecating humour just isn’t quite their style.

Returning to the beer itself, it’s definitely not just Armageddon Plus. It’s fairly radically different, actually; as I poured the first pint of it — with Rob Zombie up loud on the Malthouse sound system at about 3a.m., just for the occasion — the gorgeous pale gold of it was striking enough to induce a cartoonish double-take. On paper it’s bigger and wallopier than Armageddon, but in person it’s much sneakier than that. It’s officially more bitter, but the extra booze brings with it an undeniable sweetness that compensates — and while the hops-per-litre have gone up, in this the best word for them is lush. The varieties used and the sheer freshness of the local ones, make for an intense-but-gorgeous aroma of fruit salad shoved forcefully up the nose. The surprising deftness of it made it quaffable, but the booze provided a warning warmth, politely hinting that you probably shouldn’t down it as quickly as you happily could.

Hop-forward as the beer definitely is, that pale malt body was perfectly put together and matched to the other components, and since that’s a quality it shared with its ‘Mash Up’ brother, it probably has a lot to do with the relatively-recent hiring of Kelly Ryan. It’s way too simplistic to think of Kelly as the Malt Guy balancing out Luke the Hop Nut, of course — you can see Luke paying better attention to his malts way back in June 2009, if you know where to look — but something excellent is happening as a result of having those two brains working on the same problem, even as they stick within the confines of the Pony Enclosure, for now.

Just-about the only thing you could say against it, I thought — since I do think like that — is that it was too unexpectedly nice for a beer carrying the name Epic Hop Zombie. People were expecting a proper hop-resin-stained axe handle to the brain, and instead they got charm and something bordering on gorgeousness. Hearing the pitch — 8.5%, 80 IBU IIPA — they expected a rhinoceros but got a unicorn.³ But later occurred to me that it totally works, if you have the right kind of zombie in mind; you need the classic, shambling sort — more Shaun of the Dead than Resident Evil, you want to be picturing the ones from something like ‘Left 4 Dead’ (seriously, if you haven’t played it, you should; it’s a fucking masterpiece of the genre, cheap as chips, and will even run on your accursed Mac — if you’re one of them). Those zombies — just like Hop Zombie — are individually basically entirely harmless, but if you’re silly enough to take on a group of them on your own and underprepared… Well, then you might just be in trouble.

Verbatim: Epic ‘Hop Zombie’ IIPA 12/5/11 8.5% launched (North Island) here @ MH tonight, and the absurd busy-ness relaxed the New Staffie Regime. Unexpectedly pale gold, really. Lush fruitiness; some inevitable sweetness, with a little bit of building boozewarmth. I still prefer the ‘other name’, but this works in old-movie terms; individually harmless — but if you get a group, you’re dead. Worryingly quaffable, you’d have to say.

1: Naturally, I’m assuming (provisionally) that the multiple “launches” weren’t a case of deception. Wellington, Auckland and Hamilton were locally-true “release parties”, and I’d imagine that the “first ever public tasting” language of the Melbourne announcement was a case of communication breakdown / crossed-wires / changed timing / overzealous or carried-away promo writers, rather than trickery.
2: He says, writing this up on 6 July 2011. I am very gradually closing in on the value of t.
3: An easy confusion to make, if you think about it. Older-school myths reference unicorns as beasts of strength and power and terror, rather than sparkly foresty bordering-on-Twilighty things of wussiness.

Actual Diary entries

Yeastie Boys ‘Pot Kettle Black: 2010 U.S. Remix’

May 7, 2011 Phil 2 Comments

And so then I followed the unknown with something more familiar — as the Tragically Hip once advised,¹ seemingly referring to those times when the unknown is a disappointment. It’s also fitting that Diary II would celebrate its Hundred with a Yeastie Boys beer, since their ‘Her Majesty’ was there to break it in back in September last year. 100 entries in 244 days doesn’t strike me as too-bad an average, especially considering that the 300-ish of Diary I took six years on account of some serious slackness and patchiness.

A bottle of regular-edition PKB also showed up in the first-few pages of the new notebook, and I briefly touched upon the ‘remixes’ then — but what I didn’t mention is that they initially kinda pissed me off. Looking way back in my notes, in the original book in June 2009,² I was delighted by the peculiarity of PKB and its expectation-ruining mix of conspicuous hoppiness and big rich blackness. Then it goes to Beervana (appearing as Beer #19 in my Diary entry for the day)³ and takes out the Stouts & Porters category and wins the Peoples’ Choice award — an impressive melding of meritocracy and democracy which is so far unique. And then it reappared a few months later in a “Stout Remix” incarnation. The original had won the accolades and generated the buzz, and so people were drawn to the Yeastie Boys badge when it showed up on the taps, but they were getting something else. It’s not like I was outraged — by now, you’d probably recognise when that happens — but the bait-and-switch of it struck me as messing with people, or somehow poor form. It took until the following January before a (positive) mention of the First Remix appeared in my notes, when we tapped the last keg of it, at work. The beer had conditioned beautifully, and there’d also been a few more Yeastie Boys beers released in the meantime — the side-by-side comparative Nerdherders,⁴ an explicitly-vintaged ‘His Majesty’, and the style-bending ‘Plan K’ — which demonstrated the experimentalism that we now recognise as Their Thing. Mild discomfort averted. Now, I get it.

With the original-ish-edition now also regularly available (and with label text that nicely explains what’s going on), the remixes are the perfect way to have your cake and eat it too; a best-of-both-worlds situation if ever there was. The Second Remix, this U.S.-hopped variant right here, was an absurdly-welcome member of my ‘Beer 121: New Zealand Beer for Americans’ tasting — but I’d never gotten around to having more than a sampling-glass-worth until Jono generously brought this into work to share. Working part-time with us while he’s studying journalism, he’s originally a Coffee Nerd who is fast becoming One Of Us Beer Geeks. So we rambled away about our mutual fondness for Hunter S. Thompson, and the vexed question of the difference between porter and stout — great-big 750ml bottles of delicious beer are perfect for such occasions.

Like its First Remix brother did, it was also aging gracefully — getting on towards a year old and still tasting outrageously fresh and fantastic. The typically-citrussy notes of the bold and brash American hops made it reminiscent of Croucher’s ‘Patriot’, though the PKB seemed to have a good deal more solidity where Patriot has sharpness and snap — neither end of the spectrum seems to me less worthy than the other; they’re just different. We were both also struck by the distinct elements of umami we were getting out of it — it’s not uncommon (in my experience) for both devotees and detractors of some black beers to find them oddly-evocative of soy sauce, and I suppose this is what’s at play, since it’s something of an overlooked flavour sensation and thereby harder to put your finger on.

Coincidentally, I’d had a bottle of the regular-edition not too long previously and had also been watching episodes of The Office — in both its (English-language) incarnations. And it occured to me that there you have it, right there; that’s what’s going on. The differences are just as striking as the similarities, the ways in which it changed make perfect sense when you understand the context from which the ingredients are derived — and it’s perfectly-possible to imagine any given person liking one, or the other. Or neither, or both. You couldn’t fault anyone for their particular pair of opinions on the two options. You’re just left marvelling at the variety of the human species, and grateful that there’s a lot of good beer (of dizzyingly-varied differing types) to go around.

Verbatim: Yeastie Boys ‘PKB Remix 2010’ 7/5/11 ÷ 2 with Jono @ MH 750ml 6.8% while rambling about HST, journalism + Flying Dog on the stout-porter difference. At a year or so old, this is still outrageously fresh + delicious. Cascade puts it in the camp claimed by Croucher ‘Patriot’ — totally chocolate oranges. With a good whack of the umami sideline that makes us white people say “soy sauce!” occasionally, with a good grunty porter. We’ve got some first-edition PKB in the fridge. Must see how that’s going.

Yeastie Boys 'Pot Kettle Black', regular edition

1: In ‘Courage’ from Fully Completely (1992). As I write this up, it was very-recently Canada Day, so I’ve had the Hip stuck in my brain for a week or so. My fondness for them is one of those data points that go together with my weird accent and convince people that I ain’t from ’round here.
2: We had a really fun launch night at work for Pot Kettle Black and a Hallertau-brewed homebrew-competition-winner with the utterly-masterful name ‘Bring Your Daughter to the Porter’. Each was available on handpump and on tap, and I happened to have the night off. I spent a long time plonked on the end of the bar, happily going through several pints of each. In hindsight, neither was a session beer — my notes have them as 6% and “6-point-something%”, a failure of accurate record-keeping which tells you all you need to know.
3: Talking of ill-advised “sessioning” (as I was, above at n2, obviously) I worked after that Beervana visit, and then signed off at midnight because it was officially my 30th Birthday. Six more beers appear in my notes after that, which mostly proves how stubborn my Diary-keeping habit had finally become after years of slackness. I did very little on the Actual Birthday. Which suited me just fine.
4: As I’ve mentioned before, I love these Variant Edition experiments. They’re a great exercise in Science!, an eye-opening learning opportunity, and a great way to discover what you like / don’t like / prefer — and why. Yeastie Boys started with the Nerdherders (varyingly-hopped bitters), and did something similar with their Monsters (varyingly-hopped hoppy pale ales) and their Blondies (an abbey-ish ale and a Kölsch-ish ale produced by different yeasts).

Actual Diary entries

Moa ‘Black Power’

May 7, 2011 Phil 13 Comments

It really is difficult to separate the thing-itself from its surrounding fog of incidentals. This is your old-school philosophy headache, right here; what are the properties, and what are the mere relations — and which are the essential properties, and which are just accidental? What the philosophers seem to have unaccountably neglected is that this problem gets massively more difficult when the incidentals in question bug the fuck out of you.

Given the recent sharp uptick in their brandwank, it’s hard for me to fairly approach a new Moa beer. I’m still entirely capable of liking their stuff — and, spoiler alert, I was recently renderly properly giddy by the re-apperance of their barrel-aged Russian Imperial Stout — but it’s probably easier for the older, pre-buyout pre-brandwank bonanza stuff to endear itself, like their ‘Five Hop’ still does. Anything new has nothing (by way of good associations, in my head) to guard against all that bile-raising bullshit seeping down into it and getting damn close to ruining its chances of a fair hearing. But I do try, I really do.

An edict came down from On High which reduced the range of potential after-work freebies, which struck me as a fairly mad idea — but of course it would. Moas (Moai?) on tap were still fair game, and we had this, which was a one-off and another Marchfest offering. It was billed as a chocolate wheat beer, and named ‘Black Power’. And my eye starts twitching, and I can feel the rage starting to warm up in the back of my brain.

“Black Power”? Really? The 2011 Marchfest gave itself the under-title “the craft brewing revolution continues” and returned to a Che Guevara motif they’d used a few years previous. Most of the festival beers go along with the theme, to greater or lesser degrees, but a quick glance down the list of names leaves this one standing out fairly glaringly in the lacking-class department, referencing as it does a still-existing and still-violent local gang. After the Breakfast Beer Fiasco,¹ this just stank of another tilt at conning the media into providing free advertising — mercifully though, as best I can tell, they pretty-much failed. And after the boringly sexist bullshit their marketing department has been indulging in lately,² a “chocolate wheat beer” just seemed nakedly pandering; a simple-minded trick for winning over the women in attendance, given a cartoonish and stereotypical view of what women might drink.

Maybe not. Maybe the name was more genuine, and less tactical. Perhaps it didn’t even come from the marketing department’s Outrage Generation Subcommittee. Given a black beer, it might’ve just been an ill-considered joke, not an attempted con. And quite-possibly the chocolate wheat beer plan wasn’t shallow demographic-chasing; it could’ve just been an honest attempt to make something interesting and do an autumnal merge of the typically-summery and traditionally-wintery. This is a real problem, one of many, with brandwank: it breaks the trust between the producer and the consumer, and makes it damn hard to give credit where credit might be due. All motives become suspect, and design or business decisions just look like yet more bastard ad-man villainy.

Against all that haze, I did try to give this a fair shake. But I just didn’t like it, and I really do think that was the thing-itself, rather than its accidental or relational properties. Wheat should give a certain amount of texture that does go well with chocolatey notes — like it does in the bloody-marvellous Emerson’s Dunkelweiss, and vaguely like what oatmeal can do for a stout — but this was just disappointingly thin. What chocolatey flavours there were tasted too much of just that: chocolate flavour, in the synthetic sense, not the genuine article. Despite the limpness and the underwhelming taste, by the end of the pint it still managed to build up a filmy sticky sugary feeling in my mouth like you’d get from a pint of Red Coke after months of drinking only the Black or Silver versions. As I hinted above, Moa are capable of making a black beer with enough presence to knock your out of your shoes and leave you grinning on the floor. This one, though — much like ‘Moa Noir’, their regularly-produced black lager, if you ask me — is just a little too little to stake out a worthy corner of the lighter end of the spectrum. The relationship between what it could have been and what it was is a little too close to the one between a thing and its shadow; outline recognisably similar, substance very different. But if I start bringing Plato’s Cave and its related baggage into all this, we’ll fly right over our per-session Philosophy Limit.

Verbatim: Moa ‘Black Power’ 7/5/11 from the reduced staffies selection @ MH. On which, don’t get me started. This was a Marchfest offering from Moa, and it seems to be the intersection of stunt naming and pandering styling, in that it’s a “chocolate wheat beer”. I’m lacking in details, there being no official write-up lying around online, but it ain’t no Emerson’s Dunkelweiss, that’s for damn sure. The body is limp, the wheatiness hard to find in the glass, and the chocolate tastes fake, such as there is. It’s like actual-strawberry vs “strawberry flavour”. This is a sad simulacrum of a non-bad idea; a fifteen-year-old’s cartoon version of something that could be worthy.

1: Essentially the first real act of the Rebrand was to announce the “launch” of a “breakfast beer”, which raised the ire of a fairly reactionary anti-alcohol campaigner who — right on cue — described basically any pre-noon (or pre-evening?) drinking as “pathological”. The media had a “controversy” to report on, and Moa quickly assumed their pre-prepared mantle of Battler and Victim and Struggling Local Business and All-round Top Bloke Just Havin’ a Laugh — transparent rag of polyester horseshit though it obviously was, to anyone who cared to look. ‘Breakfast’ wasn’t even a new beer; it was just re-packaged ‘Harvest’, something they’d made for years. The whole sad story was addressed, in some exasperated detail, in episode 2 of the Beer Diary Podcast: Beer and Marketing.
2: For example, just on the subject of their ‘Breakfast’ beer (see above, n1, obviously), it was billed using such phrases as “finally, a beer the ladies can enjoy” presumably for the simple reason that there’s fruit in it. Moa’s marketing people evidently have a way out of touch view of the current relationship between beer (good and bad) and the number of X chromosomes a person happens to have.

Show notes:

Show notes:

Tastings and ramblings and whatnot